2 stars
A fun intro into the basics of casual cosplay and Disneybounding. Much of the book was Disney focused, branching off into Pixar and Star Wars characters as well as Harry Potter and Nickelodeon cartoons. It gives some fun examples of popular mainstream casual cosplay characters from Disney princesses to Hogwarts houses.
While the book does have a lot of pictures, I don’t think much of the text was needed. It was often repetitive and obvious, never really adding much or giving actual tips. It was more wordy than it needed to be. May have worked better if it simply showed a bunch of variations on the same character instead of overexplaining.
Overall, the book was okay. It was interesting to flip through to see how people represented different characters. It was like having a physical copy of the #casualcosplay tag on Insta. Most of the models’ Insta handles are also included. There were some great designs and I especially enjoyed Marina Ansaldo’s vintage spins.
However, the reason I gave the book 2 stars was that from the first flip through it is very clear that it is overly white. The book was published in 2021 yet features a majority of thin, light-skinned models. There are a few people of color among the models, but I’d have loved to see more diversity in the pages. There are plenty of awesome casual cosplayers of color and I’m disappointed this book didn’t really utilized them. This would have been a great platform to highlight the diversity of cosplayers especially considering the lack of representation of cosplayers of color in mainstream media.
Also, because of the model choices, a lot of great characters of color were passed over (John Stewart as Green Lantern, Finn, characters from Black Panther or The Princess and the Frog – Dr. Facilier would’ve been awesome to see!). Instead the book focuses on light-skinned characters with a few characters of color thrown in such as Moana, Esmeralda, and Jasmine.
A fine starting place but I really wanted more from this book. It did what it did fine but all the parts it left out dampened my enjoyment of it.